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Urgent Action: Shut down "Alligator Alcatraz" for good

82 days left to demand change

The Everglades Detention Facility, also known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, opened in Florida in July 2025 to detain migrants and asylum seekers. It has operated as a deliberate system of dehumanisation and abuse must be shut down immediately.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is the first state-owned and operated immigration detention facility in the United States. However, there is no federal oversight, and it's not integrated into ICE's systems or databases.

This lack of registration or tracking allows the authorities to hold individuals incommunicado. When families are not told where someone is, and detainees cannot contact a lawyer, this can amount to enforced disappearance. People held at the facility face significant obstacles to accessing legal representation and basic due process protections.

Amnesty's latest research has concluded that the detainees are also suffering cruel and degrading conditions - with overflowing sewage, shackling, denial of medical care, sleep deprivation, and punishment practices that amount to torture.

Immigration detention is already cruel, unnecessary, and rife with abuses. This facility’s intentional cruelty is meant to criminalise and strike fear into immigrant communities.

The Everglades Detention Centre is inhumane, irresponsible, and life-threatening.

Email the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and demand he shut the detention centre down immediately.

Download the full Urgent Action here.

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Target: Governor Ron DeSantis

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Dear Governor Ron DeSantis,

I am writing to demand that you move immediately to shut down the Everglades Detention Center in Florida, also known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, which is currently housing migrants and asylum seekers.

I am concerned about the conditions at “Alligator Alcatraz”. Amnesty International’s latest research concluded that people arbitrarily detained there are living in inhuman and unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with faecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy, including cameras above the toilets. People interviewed shared that access to medical care is inconsistent, inadequate, or denied altogether, placing individuals at serious risk of physical and mental harm. People reported always being shackled when they were outside their cages. Other treatments that the detained have endured amount to torture, including being put in the “box”, described as a minimal cage-like structure people are put in as punishment, sometimes for hours at a time, exposed to the elements with hardly any water, with their hands and feet attached to restraints on the ground.

Immigration detention is cruel, unnecessary, and rife with abuses. This facility’s intentional cruelty is meant to criminalise and strike fear into immigrant communities. The centre is also located within the Everglades, a fragile ecosystem and one of the state’s most ecologically sensitive areas. I am concerned about the impact of pollution, water quality, and efforts to restore the Everglades and protect endangered species.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is a human rights disaster. As Governor, you have the power and responsibility to protect the lives and dignity of people in Florida. You must take immediate action to close this facility and ensure that the individuals detained inside are released back into their communities, where they can navigate their immigration cases supported by lawyers and outside of detention. You must also end Florida’s laws that criminalise its immigrant residents and end its participation in President Trump’s mass incarceration and deportation machine.

The Everglades Detention Center is inhumane, irresponsible, and life-threatening. I urge you to shut it down immediately and ensure that Florida is not complicit in these abuses.

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